#241 The quiet year

It’s the beginning of the second year. I’ll call it the quiet year.

Before Janne died, I read an article in the New York Times called “how to talk to a widow”. The author writes about how after a year it was a surprise for an acquaintance that she was still in a sad spot. It’s common for widowers and widows to lose their support system just after a few weeks. The statistics I’ve seen is that seventy five percent of people around just vanish. I made a promise to learn to do everything by myself to prepare for this.

A year ago, there was still some activity around me. But I know people are just living their lives now. They don’t owe me, us anything. I know that some of them are afraid of reminders of death as that confronts them too. But there is also the other side of that existential coin: people who show up in my life even when they don’t have to. They are my lifesavers.

I still feel that Janne died just yesterday. All that talk of “time healing all wounds” or “finding joy again”, I’m sure it was made up by people who haven’t gone through what I have. Time will indeed heal all wounds, but time is infinite so it will probably take longer than my own lifetime. Yes, there is still joy in my life, but it’s like walking up a mountain, reaching the peak of happiness and then jumping down a cliff as no happiness comes without lots of sadness now.

I pride myself on having a good memory, but I spend too much time trying to recall our lives together. When I started watching the latest Slow Horses, I wondered for a long while which episode Janne watched last. After a lot of thinking, I concluded that it was the end of the second season (the fourth started now). When I think about that song I like, did Janne heard it too? It’s very confusing. It’s like those vanishing people in Marty McFly’s photos (a reference she’d have understood), but I can’t bring her back into the frame.

When I came back home after dropping the boys at school, the sun was shining through our windows. The kitchen Janne loved putting together was bathed in a golden shade, almost glimmering. It made me happy. I would give anything to have her instead of that sunshine though.